Pacha-Tikray, Inversion Chamber by Nicolás Sáez

PACHA-TIKRAY, INVERSION CHAMBER BY NICOLÁS SÁEZ

As a principle of reactivation of the environment that surrounds us, the process of inversion could be in the field of what we consider revolutionary. Many of the participants of the experience surely understood it this way, by the tone of the comments they left on the external walls of the dark chamber devised by Nicolás Sáez. This reduced single cabin, which under the pinhole principle lets light through a tiny orifice, achieves the inverted projection of what is outside. Entering this wooden polyhedron that allows observing the world in its darkness entails, at the same time, isolating ourselves to experience a revelation: from inside, what we took for granted, suddenly appears to be in the air “All that is solid melts into air,” Karl Marx pointed out in his Manifesto when suggesting the inversion of the social order that would bring about the proletarian revolution. Now, as we look out from the terrace of the AIEP Institute in downtown Antofagasta, it’s possible to observe outlines that make out the identifiable skyline of a consolidated city. But as we enter the inversion chamber, suddenly everything hangs upside down and an unknown city emerges, floating among the clouds.

An unknown city emerges, floating among

Although, on some level every representation assumes a variation of the world, in this case we encounter the contradiction that its high fidelity generates. A perfectly accurate image shown by the camera only appears inverted in this tableau vivant. For centuries, the darkroom has been used as a mechanism to ensure accuracy in drawings and paintings. Canaletto, a master, emphasized the beauty of his images of Venice with the help of the dark room, so that the realism of his paintings was not only reflected in the light shaded by his strokes, but also in the precision of his perspective achieved by the image filtered through a tiny hole.

the clouds.

Now, the graphic accuracy of the projection at the bottom of this viewfinder cannot distract us from what Nicolás Saéz slips about the Andean cosmovision that inspired his work. Pacha-tikray, in Quechua, means “to turn the earth,” it seems to suggest a metaphor for the elevated and the need to approach a sphere that observes our earthly world in a different way. The vision of the Quechua peoples comprises a tripartite world: kay pacha, which can be translated as the world of human beings; uku pacha, the world below; and hanan pacha, the upper world of spirits. However, Kay pacha, this world that we humans, plants, and animals share can connect with hanan pacha, the upper world. In a way, this inverted vision device ventures into the possibility of reordering the different worlds that make up the totality of what surrounds us. A peephole to another reality opens us to perceive them: “The world is better upside down,” a visitor wrote on the wall of the chamber.